News:

The Book of the Diner is well worth preserving. I only wish it had reached a broader audience when it might have mattered more. That is a testament to the blindness of our culture. If there is a future to look back from, one difficult question historians will have to ask is how we let this happen, when so many saw it coming. This site has certainly aggregated enough information and critical thinking to prove that.[/b]

Here's an acerbic sound bite with Dr. Peter Wadhams on humanity's greed and stupidity ranging from SUVs (Stupid Urban Vehicles) to the idiocy of politicians who won't take the steps to save humanity because they think it will cost too much and they might lose some votes.

We are not as clever a species as we think we are. After all, how can we save ourselves if there's no profit in it? Simply mind-boggling discussion you may want to watch twice.

Do share it around the world. And help us translate subtitles this and other videos for other languages.

Sorry David, but the term "rosy" has a connotation of not being real world. Why do you think I would assume otherwise? I do not get it.

I too love RMI. I am glad you share my respect for all the solutions they propose. I apologize if I misunderstood you. They want everybody to go electric. I do too. you said that was a "rosy" scenario. You then said you were going to follow a different path. What, exactly did I miss?

When we got the house, it also came with electric baseboard heating, so the understanding was, we would be using that, and the wood pellet stove would get torn out eventually. But she agreed to give it a try, and we ended up never using the the baseboard heating, only using a couple plug-in electric space heaters for a few hours about a dozen times when we would wake up to find the stove had gone out in the middle of the night.

Sorry David, but the term "rosy" has a connotation of not being real world. Why do you think I would assume otherwise? I do not get it.

I too love RMI. I am glad you share my respect for all the solutions they propose. I apologize if I misunderstood you. They want everybody to go electric. I do too. you said that was a "rosy" scenario. You then said you were going to follow a different path. What, exactly did I miss?

When we got the house, it also came with electric baseboard heating, so the understanding was, we would be using that, and the wood pellet stove would get torn out eventually. But she agreed to give it a try, and we ended up never using the the baseboard heating, only using a couple plug-in electric space heaters for a few hours about a dozen times when we would wake up to find the stove had gone out in the middle of the night.

Indeed. My only experience with same was several years ago, staying in a tiny cottage in upstate New York in late October. I was amazed at how convenient, cost-effective and environmentally friendly (or so they say) it was.

Sorry David, but the term "rosy" has a connotation of not being real world. Why do you think I would assume otherwise? I do not get it.

I too love RMI. I am glad you share my respect for all the solutions they propose. I apologize if I misunderstood you. They want everybody to go electric. I do too. you said that was a "rosy" scenario. You then said you were going to follow a different path. What, exactly did I miss?

When we got the house, it also came with electric baseboard heating, so the understanding was, we would be using that, and the wood pellet stove would get torn out eventually. But she agreed to give it a try, and we ended up never using the the baseboard heating, only using a couple plug-in electric space heaters for a few hours about a dozen times when we would wake up to find the stove had gone out in the middle of the night.

Indeed. My only experience with same was several years ago, staying in a tiny cottage in upstate New York in late October. I was amazed at how convenient, cost-effective and environmentally friendly (or so they say) it was.

I've worked with these guys here: http://www.youtube.com/v/1ASpav4XubQ?ecver=1https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ASpav4XubQthey do central boilers for wood chips, pellets, and wood; all gasification units. Our office and the brewery next door are heated with one. They just received a contract to do 30 buildings in our little town's central core as a distributed power network. Funding is up in the air as we just had a provincial power shift. All the chips for that one will come from wood waste from a local forest operation. I like it because it's local and diversifies the energy stream for added resiliency.

More Profit over Planet on behalf of Hydrocarbon Hustlers 🦖 comin' our way. League of Conservation Voters

June 30, 2018

House rushes forward on four drilling bills

Here's a partial list of these bills:

H.R. 6087, introduced by Wyoming's Rep Liz Cheney 🦖, requires citizens and groups to pay exorbitant fees to protest oil and gas leasing. If passed, the per page fee proposed in this bill could cost thousands of dollars per submission. Here's the rub: oil and gas companies don't have to pay a fee for expressing interest in these very same parcels.

H.R. 6088, introduced by Utah's Rep John Curtis 🦕, would move to hand out drilling permits as quickly as possible. Only the Interior Secretary could object to the permit — and there would be no site inspections or environmental review.

These attacks on public lands are directly aligned with the Trump administration, which over the past 18 months has sold out more federal land to drilling interests than any previous administration.

President Trump 🦀 and Interior Secretary Zinke 😈 want nothing more than to open up millions of acres of public lands to oil and gas drilling and mining. And Republican leaders in Congress are doing everything legislatively available to assist Trump and Zinke in their efforts.

Sonali Kolhatkar is a columnist for Truthdig. She also is the founder, host and executive producer of "Rising Up With Sonali," a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV (Dish Network, DirecTV,…

SNIPPET:

By its very definition, “protest” is an act of disapproval. It cannot be made with kind words, fake smiles, handshakes or quiet dinners. Protest is often an act of rage against a perceived injustice, and at this moment Americans are outraged and have every right to nonviolently confront Trump’s defenders in the streets, in restaurants and outside their homes.

Rep. Maxine Waters , D-Calif., gets it. The intrepid progressive urged her supporters to act, saying that if they “see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

A careful reading of her words makes it imminently clear that Waters believes in raucous and peaceful protest. Contrast that with Trump, who has literally called for violence against individuals and whole communities repeatedly. Worse than Trump threatening Waters for her statement has been the response of Waters’ fellow Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a statement showing immense cowardice, saying, “If you disagree with a politician, organize your fellow citizens to action and vote them out of office. But no one should call for the harassment of political opponents. That’s not right. That’s not American.”

Actually it is very American to engage in protest, whether or not Schumer interprets that as “harassment.” What is “not right” are Trump’s policies and Schumer’s unwillingness to confront them more harshly. Other Democrats echoed Schumer in denouncing Waters. Waters rightly refused to capitulate to the weak-willed establishment wing of her party and demanded a refocusing of efforts on what matters, saying, “I decided I’m just talking about the children. I want the children released, I want a plan. I want a plan for what this administration is going to do to connect these children.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan had the audacity to call on Waters to apologize, saying, “There is no place for this,” even though the Republican leader has, for well over a year, silently acquiesced to the ugliest and most violent of discourses from the president he continues to back. Perhaps Ryan is truly worried he too may no longer be able to eat out in peace or enter and exit his home without facing protesters in the streets outside. If so, Waters and the activists she spoke to in her statements are the real winners in the war for the nation’s moral conscience.

There is nothing civil about a president and Supreme Court deciding to ban people from whole nations vis-à-vis the Muslim ban ruling by the Supreme Court this week. There is nothing civil about more than 2,000 children being held hostage by the Trump administration. There is nothing civil about the massive numbers of undercounted deaths in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria for which Trump has yet to be held accountable. There is nothing civil about Trump’s undoing of the Iran nuclear deal. There is nothing civil about the GOP’s offensive on Obamacare, its tax giveaway to the rich, its attacks on voting rights or the undermining of unions. In the face of such relentless daily assaults on our Constitution, our social safety net, our human rights and dignity, Schumer and his ilk want us to remain civil?

It is quite likely that proponents of slavery, Jim Crow racism, Japanese-American internment, etc., called for calm over fury. Nothing helps the status quo quite like civil discourse in the face of daily destruction.

Wilkinson and her staff concluded they could not serve Sanders in good conscience because of her immoral actions, not her identity.

Some, not I, would say the staff had no say since they had no risk in the business. Capitalism has a way of forcing everyone to a lowest common denominator. A business can go out of business if it tries to pay a living wage when the competition won't. Tariffs are meant to prevent unfair competition as one example of necessary regulation to fix the problem. The idea is hundreds of years old. The responsibility of leveling tariffs left to the president in our constitution. Yet so called progressives are acting like it is a poison Trump personally invented. Capitalism corrupts and it corrupts absolutely. It robs people of being able to know right from wrong. In this situation the decision was really the wish of the employees which the owner could have vetoed. They called her in to make the decision. Going along with them was the right thing to do from any point of view, wise or decent. They had respect enough for the owner to have her come in and make the decision and that was wise for all that she returned that respect. Far better for the health of the business than to risk the loss of a few customers who are OK with immorality. The ones lost would be no loss. The infectious gain in restaurant moral will bring in new customers.

This issue is revealing everyones true colors. The idea that someone has the right not to serve someone in their restaurant is making those who think they can own other people very uncomfortable. Conservatives, some even here in the diner, would have you believe that not being a slave to the system and not serving the rich and the powerful makes you immoral. These same people would have no trouble throwing out a bum. What's the difference? Capital is the god of the bourgeois and it defines their morality. Only capital makes the situations different.

Sorry David, but the term "rosy" has a connotation of not being real world. Why do you think I would assume otherwise? I do not get it.

I too love RMI. I am glad you share my respect for all the solutions they propose. I apologize if I misunderstood you. They want everybody to go electric. I do too. you said that was a "rosy" scenario. You then said you were going to follow a different path. What, exactly did I miss?

When we got the house, it also came with electric baseboard heating, so the understanding was, we would be using that, and the wood pellet stove would get torn out eventually. But she agreed to give it a try, and we ended up never using the the baseboard heating, only using a couple plug-in electric space heaters for a few hours about a dozen times when we would wake up to find the stove had gone out in the middle of the night.

Oh, I understand how "radical" it seems to most people, all right; So does Amory Lovins.

JD, I have never had a baseboard spaceheater in my present 70' X 14 ' extremely well insulated and energy efficient Pine Grove Manufactured home. It came with a kerosene fired furnace. That furnace was a cash cow for the maintenance people that had a "silver" or a "gold" contract which included the "inspection" annually and lowered rates for (Help! NO HEAT!) home visits in a winter emergency. Those contracts were ignored by yours truly. Those contracts, as far back as the year 2000, were a MINIMUM of $200 a year. Those contracts DID NOT include fuel costs or routine electrode replacements, though they did include labor. BFD. They would punish you for not taking their contracts by charging you $90 just to come to your home in winter (NO HEAT!) BEFORE parts and labor. And THAT was if it was during a weekday during the day. Nights and weekends were, OF COURSE, extra.

I considered that highway robbery. I still do. I shudder to think what that pack of furnance maintenance crooks charge now.

And then there were those nice folks from Rowley Fuels who wanted my social security number so they could establish an account for me where coulld pay within 30 days of receiving the bill so I did not have to pay when the Kerosene was delivered. I had been their customer in the home I had rented right next to this one (before this one existed) for two years. I was not having any of that. So, I continued to pay on delivery with a check, even though it was a hassle when the weather was really bitter cold and snowy.

Since you do not understand how not having white privilege works, I won't bore you with details about how every dumbassed ignorant local yokel here is NOT asked for a social security number to be billed monthly for his fuel.

Any IDIOT can tell that the fuel company MUST be paid, or they won't keep providing you with fuel. So, you can pretend Rowley fuels was acting reasonably if you wish. They weren't. As I said before, since you have never been in my shoes, you cannot understand how clever Vermont style prejudices are directed towards brown folks like me and my wife. You and I have been down this road before. Believe what you will. I willl not argue with you. The irony for Rowley Fuels' selective social security requests Vermont fun and games "procedure" is that the dude with the "right color" that bought that trailer after I left eventually stiffed Rowley Fuels (I observed fuel deliveries when no one was home. The guy would leave the bill at the door). I know he eventually stiffed them because one winter (a few years later) the Rowley Fuels truck showed up at his home three times within a month after fuel delivery, without delivering fuel. No one would answer the door. A few months later a different outfit delivered the fuel. LOL

Now I will return to the cost issue.

After the cost of Kerosene went to the moon (around 2003), PLUS some ungodly gauging by the furnance maintenance people, I decided that the furnace was not economically practical, when compared with small electric heaters.

Some background is in order. I had baseboard space heaters a long, long time ago in a two story Colonial (5357 Fortuna Parkway, Clay, New York - you can see it with Google Earth) I owned when I worked at Syracuse TRACON (1978-1982). They've got a pool now. I didn't, but I planted those trees 🌳 🌳in the back . I also planted two blue spruce 🌲🌲 in the front as wind breaks but the new owners chopped them down around 2002 👎. I supplemented that incredibly expensive (0.11 per kWh back THEN!) electrical heat with a couple of cords of wood (I would buy annually as logs and saw and split myself) with fireplace heating.

Before anybody jumps in and tells me how fireplace heating is "inefficient" because you actually lose more heat up the chimney than you get from the wood while you are faked out into believing otherwise by the radiant heat from the flames, let me explain that I had an insert in the fireplace with pipes and and tempered glass doors. The heatilator gizmo convected cooler air from the family room into the pipes that fed the air out the upper part of the unit back into the room.

I know how to make a fireplace efficient, even if most people don't. I know how to avoid creosote issues and chimney hot spots too.

Where were we? Right, the kerosene furnace is more thermodynamically efficient than electric heating (WHEN MAINTENANCE, LABOR, PARTS AND BUSH FUEL PRICE SHOCKS ARE IGNORED).

As of 2004, after a winter where a (Help! NO HEAT!) rather expensive maintenance guy almost killed us by setting the electrodes so poorly that some unprejudiced Vermonter with a conscience on the street (DAYS LATER!) stopped and warned us that our stack was all black and billowing black smoke (NO, complaining to the maintenance people did not help. NO, they did not reimburse us for the cost of that visit. YES, we had to pay for ANOTHER visit where a different dude set the electrode gap properly. ). I said, THAT'S IT! I'M DONE WITH THIS CRAP!

We went electric with portable heaters. We heated more ourselves than all 980 square feet of the home.

Yeah, it's not as comfortable as the WASTEFUL PIG HABIT of keeping he house toasty, which is the customary American way. Yeah, I used to do that. Yeah, it should not be done. Yeah, we need to reduce ourselves. Yeah, though it turned out to be more efficient (used LESS ENERGY) than the Kerosene CRAP furnace, I switched so I could save MONEY, not energy.

We do not DO long baseboard space heaters. They are STUPID. They are INEFFICIENT. If you have them, THROW THEM AWAY.

JD, you are a permaculture guy. I suggest you take a HARD LOOK at WHERE those wood chip pellets, that you THINK are coming from waste shrups of shavings or whatever, are REALLY coming from. THAT IS, they are DESTROYING old growth forests for those "efficient" wood pellets! If your supplier has sworn on a stack of Bibles that they do not get their wood from virgin or old growth forests, they are LYING to you.

Now, with the Vornado use a phenomenon that they poorly understood in the past, a type of air swirl is created that electrically heats with much LESS energy than before.

Go 100% ELECTRIC ZONE Heating, JD. If you can get that juice from solar panels, so much the better, but stop using wood for heat and/or gas for cooking. It's BAD for the biosphere. It provides profits to people that do not give a rat's ass about future generations.

The only one that can claim a lick of sense in continuing to burn wood for heat here is David B. because he harvests it himself, PERIOD.

Anyone that tells you that hydrocarbon heating is more energy efficient than ZONE electrical resistance heating is cherry picking convenient facts and ignoring inconvenient realities of the VAST amount of energy required just to GET THAT HYDROCARBON FROM THE WELL TO THE REFINERY TO STRIP OUT THE OXYGEN TO THEN GO THROUGH THE CRACKING TOWERS TO THE STORAGE TANKS TO THE TRUCK TO THE SUPPLIER TO YOUR HOUSE where, of course, Amerikans bask in high energy density/enthalpy of hydrocarbons for heat and poo-poo those ugly, inefficient, fire hazard, baby killer (you get the idea) electric heaters.

The fact that ONE furnace requires MUCH MORE energy to manufacture than that needed to manufacture the TOTAL amount of ZONE electric heaters you will need for about FIFTY YEARS OR SO, is somehow not part of the "efficiency" calculations.

The fact that ONE furnace costs MUCH MORE MONEY than the TOTAL amount of ZONE electric heaters you will need for about FIFTY YEARS OR SO, is somehow not part of the "cost" calculations.

The FACT that electric heaters are maintenance free versus furnace ANNUAL maintenance inspection costs plus $100 (plus $) winter visits for NO HEAT and labor and parts, are not part of the "cost comparison" calculations.

Finally, there is one DETAIL that I love to bring up. If the igniter/electrode assemply is not tuned EXACTLY RIGHT, you don't get complete combustion. The electrode gap gets out of spec regularly. Most people don't get it adjusted (unless black smoke is billowing out your stack, of course ) more than once a YEAR, if they are thorough. Many have them checked only when the smoke looks strange, NOT even annually.

THEREFORE, any fossil fueler that parades the enthalpy of Kerosene as a justification for using that hydrocarbon CRAP over electric resistance heating is pushing ERRONEOUS energy density figures. Those Infernal electrodes start losing spec within two months of having their gap set. I KNOW. I watched my stack often (experience is the best teacher. ). Those electrodes WEAR from HEAT in the combustion chamber of the furnace. Those electrodes have to be changed.

You NEVER have to change an electrical resistance on an electric heater unless your dog ate a portion of it.

Burning Kerosene is STUPID. Using electric ZONE small heaters with Vornado swirl technology is SMART.

I have done ALL the math on furnaces. They are NOT cost efective. The defenders of that hydrocarbon burning CRAP will argue until the cows come home about hydrocarbon high energy density/enthalpy and the "horrendous" efficiency losses using a resistance to heat with entail. They will yaba-daba-doo about how electricity is mostly produced by burning hydrocarbons, as if the OBVIOUS solution to that was not simply getting MORE electricity from Renewable Technology, NOT keeping on with the hydrocarbon horseshit!

I am SICK AND TIRED of the DUMBASSED GAME the proponents of this insane, unsustainble clusterfuck called hydrocarbon based civilization keep trying to play by defending the abysmal stupidity, as well as totally unjustified INEFFICIENCY, never mind the POLLUTION added on, of this SUICIDAL use of hydrocarbons. These IDIOTS are quiet as DEATH about the 174,000 PLUS gasolene fires in cars each year PLUS the 500 or so deaths each year, just in the USA, from CO poisoning CAUSED by using hydrocarbons for heat.

Quote

CO poisoning is the nation's leading cause of accidental poisoning deaths ☠️. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that about 500 people die due to CO poisoning annually. https://sf-fire.org/carbon-monoxide-facts

INSTEAD, these hydrocarboon hustlers wail and moan about those electric space heaters burning down houses and killing all those poor people that didn't use hydrocarbons to heat their home, like all good Germans Americans should. 😇

BULLSHIT! Vornado, and other types of top notch small area electric heaters have all sorts of failsafes now. They use air swirl fluid dynamics physics (NEW scientific knowledge pioneered by AMORY LOVINS!) that vastly improved efficiency. In addition, there are some other high tech type electric heaters, that, though above my budget, are even more efficient.

Yeah, I know I'm not going to convince that pack of stubborn hydrocarbon loving mules here of going fully electric. I get that. They are married to the past. That past is killing us. They DO NOT get that. I do.

The only downside, which I DO NOT consider a downside, but some bright bulb here certainly may consider it as a downside, is the water pipe risk of freezing. The furnace has ducts under the floor, next to the water pipes. The ducts, though insulated, stlll lose some heat that keeps the pipes well above freezing. So, since we switched to all electric nearly 15 years ago , we have to open the faucet a bit during the two most bitterly cold months here (January and February).

Anyone that claims hydrocarbon heating is more efficient than electrical resistance heating is married to the past and quoting inaccurate figures from old electrical use technology, as well as furnace efficiency figures based on complete combustion, something that does NOT happen for ten months out of the year, in addition to all the other vast amount of energy required to get that crap to your house.

Amory Lovins HAS DONE ALL THE MATH. Electric heating is NOT "radical". Electric heating is the only truly sustainable way to heat, as long as we get that juice from Renewables. See below how the Rocky Mountain Institute has PROVEN that electrical resistance heating is the tecchnology everyone should embrace NOW.

Quote

The Innovation Center redefines how occupants experience and control their individual comfort. Integrative design eliminated mechanical cooling and reduced the heating system to a small, distributed electric-resistance system.

Most buildings rely on blowing hot or cold air using large combined HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems to maintain a set temperature, which wastes energy and actually has little impact on how comfortable a person feels. In contrast, the Innovation Center addresses all six factors that impact individual comfort, requiring dramatically less energy.

Six Factors that Influence Comfort

The Innovation Center’s comfort strategy is guided by the following factors, which were delivered according to listed design strategies:

Several technologies are used in the Innovation Center to deliver thermal comfort, using the least amount of energy possible including:

Electric floor mats provide targeted, radiant heat to occupants and are only used on the coldest mornings.

Personalized heating/cooling chairs provide occupants with individual thermal controls by delivering heating and cooling directly to their body with only 14 watts in heating mode, and four watts in ventilation mode.

Personal USB fans that plug into computers for each occupant. Good airflow, (>120 fpm) enables air temperatures to be four degrees F warmer without making occupants uncomfortable.

High-efficiency ceiling fans that use only two to 30 watts depending on speed settings, exceeding ENERGY STAR requirements by 450–750%

Wilkinson and her staff concluded they could not serve Sanders in good conscience because of her immoral actions, not her identity.

Some, not I, would say the staff had no say since they had no risk in the business. Capitalism has a way of forcing everyone to a lowest common denominator. A business can go out of business if it tries to pay a living wage when the competition won't. Tariffs are meant to prevent unfair competition as one example of necessary regulation to fix the problem. The idea is hundreds of years old. The responsibility of leveling tariffs left to the president in our constitution. Yet so called progressives are acting like it is a poison Trump personally invented. Capitalism corrupts and it corrupts absolutely. It robs people of being able to know right from wrong. In this situation the decision was really the wish of the employees which the owner could have vetoed. They called her in to make the decision. Going along with them was the right thing to do from any point of view, wise or decent. They had respect enough for the owner to have her come in and make the decision and that was wise for all that she returned that respect. Far better for the health of the business than to risk the loss of a few customers who are OK with immorality. The ones lost would be no loss. The infectious gain in restaurant moral will bring in new customers.

This issue is revealing everyones true colors. The idea that someone has the right not to serve someone in their restaurant is making those who think they can own other people very uncomfortable. Conservatives, some even here in the diner, would have you believe that not being a slave to the system and not serving the rich and the powerful makes you immoral. These same people would have no trouble throwing out a bum. What's the difference? Capital is the god of the bourgeois and it defines their morality. Only capital makes the situations different.

This Is The World They Want

TPTB will kill most of us quite happily to avoid losing their grip on the profit over planet business as usual destroying the biosphere. Capitalism is the Cancer giving us Hydrocarbon Hell.

Agelbert NOTE: Dr. Canadell tells it like it is. That is, emissions are going unsustainably UP, as in, there is NO WAY we can stop warming at 2º C above pre-industrial UNLESS we have ZERO emissions as of 2040.

He explains the gravity of the climate situation with evidence. He points out that fires are occurring in wooded areas with no history of fires.

He explains that when most known coral bleaching occurs, the cause is that corals basically starve over several weeks, but the Australian Great Barrier Reef bleaching was caused by the corals overheating to death in about ONE WEEK!.

He explains that an even more alarming event, that has not been widely publicized, occurred. That is, mangrove regions experienced the largest die-off that has ever been observed. All this is a DIRECT result of Global Warming.

Finally, this serious scientist with world class credentials makes it crystal clear that if we do not replace ALL hydrocarbon burning with Renewable Energy Technology BEFORE 2050 , 4º C above pre-industrial and above is unavoidable. He goes further to state that, by 2040, ALL developed country economies most be fully decarbonized. He admits he sees no way that can occur unless massive carbon capture and sequestration technology efforts are undertaken.

He states that it would be incredibly stupid to continue burning hydrocarbons in the face of the threat to the biosphere of an overheated climate.

For anybody here (you know who you are) that attempts to discredit or ridicule what Dr. Canadell says in the interview, I suggest you read his bio before you insert your hydrocarbon loving foot in your mouth. Please do not make a fool of yourself by trying to undermine the validity of Dr. Canadell's information.

Member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Fourth Assessment Report) awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Professional Experience

Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project (GCP), the first joint project of the Earth System Partnership (ESSP) sponsored by: the Interntional Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the International Human Dimension Programme (IHDP), the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), and Diversitas. For information on the GCP, please visit: www.globalcarbonproject.org.

In this week’s show I have two top level scientists. Pep Canadell the Director of the Global Carbon Project reports a big increase in greenhouse gas emissions in 2018, mostly coming from China. We talk about whether even 2 degrees C of global warming is just a dream now.

The first interview is with Pep Canadell from the Global Carbon Project. As examples, Pep told me three stories about Australia that made my hair stand up 😨 (well… the hair I have left). Two I heard of and covered, and yet his explanation carried fundamental facts about each that I did not know.

Also, he says, in the first 3 months of 2018, global carbon emissions took a serious step up, after pausing for a couple of years. (For a couple of years the increase paused, not the pollution). The reason for the new carbon spurt: growth in the Chinese economy. China emitted 27% of the globe’s greenhouse gases in the past year. The U.S. was responsible for 14%, and the EU 7%.

Quote

““Our estimates indicate that, due to higher than assumed economic growth rates, there is a greater than 35 per cent probability that year 2100 emissions concentrations will exceed those given by RCP8.5,” says Peter Christensen of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.”

Christensen continues: “While some claim the link between economic growth and greenhouse emissions has been broken – or ‘decoupled’ – it’s only been weakened. Carbon emissions have risen in the European Union over the past four years as economic growth has picked up, Peters points out. In 2017, EU emissions rose 1.8 per cent.”

Climate change is coming sooner and harder than expected. With alarming new research, I’ve been saying the dreaded 2 degrees C of warming is unlikely – even with geoengineering. So why are some officials still talking as though 1.5 degrees is the goal? Finally more realism is emerging – partly due to stunning new emission figures for China. Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper “Most climate scientists think 2 degrees to be aspirational.”

While all industrial nations have failed to slash emissions, the story from China is worse. The latest emissions figures come from satellite data, with reporting from Greenpeace and the Global Carbon Project.

The Greenpeace report says:

“Now government data indicates China’s CO2 emissions went up 4.0% on the first quarter, after a 2% increase in 2017. Calculating demand from government data on production, trade, and industry data on inventories, coal demand increased 3.5%, oil demand 4.3%, gas demand 10% while cement output fell 4.5%. This has led researchers to warn that we could see a 5% increase in emissions from China this year, the largest since 2011.”

In Canberra Australia, I reached Dr. Josep Canadell, known as “Pep”. He is the long-time Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project, and a research scientist for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia. Pep is an author in more than 150 peer-reviewed science papers and a member of the Nobel Prize-winning 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.

Dr. Josep “Pep” Canadell, Global Carbon Project and CISRO

There was a lot of good news coming out of China over the past few years. Mass transit there is booming along with the world’s largest solar build-up. We heard the Chinese coal plant binge was ending. I thought big hydro electric plants, like Three Gorges, would help cut coal dependence. But actual emissions measurements tell us greenhouse gas emissions from China are much worse during the first 3 months of 2018.

Dr. Canadell was also a co-author of a 2016 paper on “Estimating cropland carbon mitigation potentials in China“. There are several ways China can modify its huge agricultural system to help the climate system, but they need time and a lot of investment in training millions of farmers. For example, rice-growers can reduce the time their fields are flooded, to reduce the dangerous greenhouse gas methane.

We also discuss whether the world can stop at 2 degrees of warming, or whether we are headed to a planet 3, 4 or more degrees C hotter. In July 2011, there was a conference at the University of Melbourne, titled “Four Degrees Or More? Australia in a Hot World”. The German climate scientist Dr. John Schellnhuber gave the keynote address, which we broadcast on Radio Ecoshock. The mood then was “what if”. Now four degrees seems much more possible.

A day before this interview, I drove through a flooded out neighborhood in southern British Columbia. Everything was dragged to the street in piles. Many houses had a red tag, condemned to be torn down. Hardly anyone could get insurance. Their lives are wrecked along with their homes. Local business may never return. We see emissions accelerating. So are the repeated hits to people and communities all over the world. Do you think climate change alone could bring down the economy into a new low state?

We began by talking about a worrying burst of carbon coming from China. I worry that pretty soon the worst of nationalist voices will blame China for the extreme weather. But of course, the extreme heat and weather we are experiencing now comes from emissions from North America and Europe. The real impact of Chinese emissions in 2018 will be experienced at least 20 years from now.

Tune in the big picture on carbon in the atmosphere at globalcarbonproject.org.

JIM KOSSIN – MORE DAMAGING STORMS

My second discussion is with Jim Kossin who just published a paper in Nature about slower moving cyclones since 1950. They are slowing (think Hurricane Harvey) and the peak is moving toward the Poles. Closer to the tropics a slight there may be a slight reprieve in the odds of extreme rainfall events; further north – welcome to a new and terrible experience!

Dr. Jim Kossin, NOAA

From Texas to Taiwan slow-moving hurricanes have caused record damage. Has something changed in the way these big storms work? Four well-known climate scientists are asking “Does global warming make tropical cyclones stronger?”

Dr. Jim Kossin is an Atmospheric Research Scientist. He’s with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA. Jim is currently a Lead Author on the U.S. Global Change Research Program, for their Fourth National Climate Assessment [NCA4]. He’s also working on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] Sixth Assessment Report [AR6]. Jim has won awards and the key science he publishes is used by world climate researchers and meteorologists. He’s just published an important paper in the journal Nature.

Dr. Jim Kossin of NOAA leads climate reports for the U.S. Government and the IPCC. His specialty is big storms. Kossin’s latest paper says tropical cyclones (hurricanes) are slowing down and leaving a greater trail of destruction. This is your news before it’s news, on Radio Ecoshock.

My second discussion is with Jim Kossin who just published a paper in Nature about slower moving cyclones since 1950. They are slowing (think Hurricane Harvey) and the peak is moving toward the Poles. Closer to the tropics a slight there may be a slight reprieve in the odds of extreme rainfall events; further north – welcome to a new and terrible experience!

Dr. Jim Kossin, NOAA

From Texas to Taiwan slow-moving hurricanes have caused record damage. Has something changed in the way these big storms work? Four well-known climate scientists are asking “Does global warming make tropical cyclones stronger?”

Dr. Jim Kossin is an Atmospheric Research Scientist. He’s with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA. Jim is currently a Lead Author on the U.S. Global Change Research Program, for their Fourth National Climate Assessment [NCA4]. He’s also working on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] Sixth Assessment Report [AR6]. Jim has won awards and the key science he publishes is used by world climate researchers and meteorologists. He’s just published an important paper in the journal Nature.

Dr. Jim Kossin of NOAA leads climate reports for the U.S. Government and the IPCC. His specialty is big storms. Kossin’s latest paper says tropical cyclones (hurricanes) are slowing down and leaving a greater trail of destruction.

Kossin also helped co-ordinate the Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters. He is a recognized world experts on big storms. Jim’s latest paper was published June 6th, 2018 in Nature. It is titled “A global slowdown of tropical-cyclone translation speed“.

Before we can talk about the most damaging storms in the world, we need to quickly clear up two terms. First, hurricanes and tropical cyclones are the same thing.

Second, storm scientists talk about “translation speed”. While newscasters report on the spinning speed within the hurricane (winds of 160 miles per hour, for example) – the translation speed is the progress of the storm over land or sea. If it is moving “forward” at 30 miles or kilometers per hour, that is the translation speed. This new paper is largely about a slowdown not in the winds of hurricanes (in general those are tending to increase) but in the movement of the big storms across the landscape.

That matters a lot. Hurricane Harvey stayed over Houston for a couple of days, dumping massive amounts of rain, and then doubled back for a second hit. It’s translation speed was quite low. In 2011, I covered Hurricane Irene which wasn’t all that strong by the time it hit New England. But it dumped incredible amounts of rain for several days, causing wide-spread flooding and damage. When we consider a warmer atmosphere puts more water into the sky, a slower translation speed means even more flooding.

Similarly, while scientists suspect that a slow-down in the movement of tropical cyclones/hurricanes is due to climate change, the exact mechanism has not yet been proven.

Another recent paper, published April 6th and led by Ethand Gutmann from The National Center for Atmospheric Research also suggested slower moving storms with faster winds. That study was published by the American Meteorological Society, and it backs up what our guest Jim Kossin found.

From Kossin’s paper, here are the regions most impacted by this tropical cyclone slowdown. “Of particular importance is the slowdown of 30 per cent and 20 per cent over land areas affected by western North Pacific and North Atlantic tropical cyclones, respectively, and the slowdown of 19 per cent over land areas in the Australian region.”

“THE STRONGEST FUTURE STORMS WILL EXCEED THE STRENGTH OF ANY IN THE PAST”

Agelbert NOTE: If you want to know the PLAN thatRepublicans (and Libertarians, who really want you to be a wage slave supporting their LIBERTINE, immoral, empathy deficit disordered cruel lifestyles) in general, AND TRUMP IN PARTICULAR, have for your economic future, just look at what this brave lady did in 1901, during the last Libertarian"paradise" in the USA. As you will learn, in the USA of that period (and AGAIN in the present) Con Artists 😈 do better economically than decent, honest, hard working people.

Who Was the First Person to Survive Going over Niagara Falls?

There were no 401(k) plans or Social Security checks at the start of the 20th century. If you hadn’t saved enough money to live comfortably in your later years, you could end up in the proverbial poorhouse. That was the troubling future that Annie Edson Taylor was facing in 1901. Then in her 60s, the “very prim and proper” lady had taught school for years, but ultimately found herself penniless after a sad turn of events in which her husband died in the Civil War and she lost her only child soon after birth.

So she came up with a plan: She’d become the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. As the famous Queen of the Mist, Taylor was certain that the notoriety would fund her golden years. Sealed into the padded barrel with a 200-pound (91-kg) anvil attached to the bottom as ballast, Taylor washed over the rocky falls on Oct. 24, 1901. It also happened to be her 63rd birthday. She survived, virtually unscathed.

One woman's plan for retirement:

֍ Despite her miraculous achievement, the event clearly shook Taylor to her core. She later told the press, "If it was with my dying breath, I would caution anyone against attempting the feat ... I would sooner walk up to the mouth of a cannon, knowing it was going to blow me to pieces than make another trip over the Fall."

֍ Sadly, Taylor never found the financial security that she so desperately sought. Her manager 😈 absconded with the famous barrel, and interest in her story was tepid. She did make a little money posing for pictures and selling 10-cent biographies at a Niagara Falls souvenir stand.

֍ “Her stage appearances did not work out that well,” said historian Sherman Zavitz. “She just didn’t seem to have the kind of charisma or personality (...) to carry off that kind of thing very well.”

Annie Taylor died on April 29, 1921, aged 82, at the Niagara County Infirmary in Lockport, New York, and was interred next to English-born daredevil Carlisle D. Graham (1886 - 1905) in the "Stunter's Rest" section of Oakwood Cemetery in Niagara Falls, New York.

Agelbert NOTE: If you want to know the PLAN thatRepublicans (and Libertarians, who really want you to be a wage slave supporting their LIBERTINE, immoral, empathy deficit disordered cruel lifestyles) in general, AND TRUMP IN PARTICULAR, have for your economic future, just look at what this brave lady did in 1901, during the last Libertarian"paradise" in the USA. As you will learn, in the USA of that period (and AGAIN in the present) Con Artists 😈 do better economically than decent, honest, hard working people.

Who Was the First Person to Survive Going over Niagara Falls?

There were no 401(k) plans or Social Security checks at the start of the 20th century. If you hadn’t saved enough money to live comfortably in your later years, you could end up in the proverbial poorhouse. That was the troubling future that Annie Edson Taylor was facing in 1901. Then in her 60s, the “very prim and proper” lady had taught school for years, but ultimately found herself penniless after a sad turn of events in which her husband died in the Civil War and she lost her only child soon after birth.

So she came up with a plan: She’d become the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. As the famous Queen of the Mist, Taylor was certain that the notoriety would fund her golden years. Sealed into the padded barrel with a 200-pound (91-kg) anvil attached to the bottom as ballast, Taylor washed over the rocky falls on Oct. 24, 1901. It also happened to be her 63rd birthday. She survived, virtually unscathed.

One woman's plan for retirement:

֍ Despite her miraculous achievement, the event clearly shook Taylor to her core. She later told the press, "If it was with my dying breath, I would caution anyone against attempting the feat ... I would sooner walk up to the mouth of a cannon, knowing it was going to blow me to pieces than make another trip over the Fall."

֍ Sadly, Taylor never found the financial security that she so desperately sought. Her manager 😈 absconded with the famous barrel, and interest in her story was tepid. She did make a little money posing for pictures and selling 10-cent biographies at a Niagara Falls souvenir stand.

֍ “Her stage appearances did not work out that well,” said historian Sherman Zavitz. “She just didn’t seem to have the kind of charisma or personality (...) to carry off that kind of thing very well.”

Annie Taylor died on April 29, 1921, aged 82, at the Niagara County Infirmary in Lockport, New York, and was interred next to English-born daredevil Carlisle D. Graham (1886 - 1905) in the "Stunter's Rest" section of Oakwood Cemetery in Niagara Falls, New York.

Synchronicity: at a staff meeting this morning, one of my producers actually read me this story! He brought in a couple of tidbits from a calendar he has that he thought would be of interest. What are the chances?

Agelbert NOTE: If you want to know the PLAN thatRepublicans (and Libertarians, who really want you to be a wage slave supporting their LIBERTINE, immoral, empathy deficit disordered cruel lifestyles) in general, AND TRUMP IN PARTICULAR, have for your economic future, just look at what this brave lady did in 1901, during the last Libertarian"paradise" in the USA. As you will learn, in the USA of that period (and AGAIN in the present) Con Artists 😈 do better economically than decent, honest, hard working people.

Who Was the First Person to Survive Going over Niagara Falls?

There were no 401(k) plans or Social Security checks at the start of the 20th century. If you hadn’t saved enough money to live comfortably in your later years, you could end up in the proverbial poorhouse. That was the troubling future that Annie Edson Taylor was facing in 1901. Then in her 60s, the “very prim and proper” lady had taught school for years, but ultimately found herself penniless after a sad turn of events in which her husband died in the Civil War and she lost her only child soon after birth.

So she came up with a plan: She’d become the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. As the famous Queen of the Mist, Taylor was certain that the notoriety would fund her golden years. Sealed into the padded barrel with a 200-pound (91-kg) anvil attached to the bottom as ballast, Taylor washed over the rocky falls on Oct. 24, 1901. It also happened to be her 63rd birthday. She survived, virtually unscathed.

One woman's plan for retirement:

֍ Despite her miraculous achievement, the event clearly shook Taylor to her core. She later told the press, "If it was with my dying breath, I would caution anyone against attempting the feat ... I would sooner walk up to the mouth of a cannon, knowing it was going to blow me to pieces than make another trip over the Fall."

֍ Sadly, Taylor never found the financial security that she so desperately sought. Her manager 😈 absconded with the famous barrel, and interest in her story was tepid. She did make a little money posing for pictures and selling 10-cent biographies at a Niagara Falls souvenir stand.

֍ “Her stage appearances did not work out that well,” said historian Sherman Zavitz. “She just didn’t seem to have the kind of charisma or personality (...) to carry off that kind of thing very well.”

Annie Taylor died on April 29, 1921, aged 82, at the Niagara County Infirmary in Lockport, New York, and was interred next to English-born daredevil Carlisle D. Graham (1886 - 1905) in the "Stunter's Rest" section of Oakwood Cemetery in Niagara Falls, New York.

Synchronicity: at a staff meeting this morning, one of my producers actually read me this story! He brought in a couple of tidbits from a calendar he has that he thought would be of interest. What are the chances?

Thanks, bro.

Yep, I agree this is not a random occurence. Times are hard and people of good will 🌟 think along similar lines.

Here's another bit of strangeness to give anyone the heebee jeebees. I make a calendar to post salient events and routine exercise data with lots of graphics, including the seasonal weather and so on for 8 week periods. It's a sort of visual diary I can look back on. I've been doing that for several years now. On the first of any given month, I frame it and color it. I normally use a square frame. Here's the frame I used when I prepared the latest calender beginning on October 14, 2018.

The entry for today (stock market ) was filled in today, of course. The numbers M144A119 and C708 stand for Maximum and Average pulse and Calories for my 40 minute treadmill workout. The Jewish star around November 1, 2018 was just something that popped into my head. I've rarely used the Jewish star frame. Was I somehow getting a vibe that the coming synagogue massacre, caused DIRECTLY, do not pass go, do not collect $200, by Trump's Stochastic Terrorism, would motivate influential Jews in the USA to bring the bastard Republicans down? We will soon know if American Jews will help bring some sanity to our system.

At any rate, I immediately thought of that calendar advanced entry when the massacre of 11 Jews in a Synagogue occurred October 27, 2018.